THE HOLY GRAIL OF FAILURE

I’ll tell you why I consider failure ‘holy.’ Believe me, it hurts like hell. “Rejected” and “dejected” come from the same root: something thrown back at us, something that makes us lie down, give up. I had the wind taken out of me for two days. “Failure” casts its pall on your whole life, making you feel smaller than you when you see yourself in the black mirror of its dark light. We feel we alone suffer so while the rest of the world and the people in it are joyously ‘successful,’ which, of course, is not true in the least. Life puts such demands and pressures on those of us who are ambitious in any sphere – and most of us are: if it’s not in this or that field, we are ambitious enough to want peace and contentment.

At the very least, failure, if we don’t let it grind us down – and we mustn’t! Mustn’t! – can strengthen us to bear more, to accept our destinies, and to carry on. For carrying on is what it’s all about.